Photo Update 6/11/13

Swung by campus yesterday to check on the recent developments.

The Centre Marketplace addition is finishing up and should be ready for people by the end of next month.

Here's a rendering showing off what looks to be... a coffee and tea bar? Not really sure what to make of it. This space also looks very much like the sandwich bar space just to the left after you enter... not sure why they'd give that up to convert it to whatever this is...

Here's a somewhat blurry shot showing what the inside of the Centre Marketplace looks like right now.

 

These are great posters that are up in various places (including several places in the Student Union) promoting 4-year graduation, a percentage we definitely need to improve here at FAU to move up in the rankings.

 

There were also a lot of framed posters from Program Board concerts in the recent past hanging up on the second floor of the Student Union. It underscored how much entertainment SG has provided to the students and what caliber bands we could get here.

As you probably know, Coyote Jack's is now becoming "The Burrow Bar & Grill." There's a sign on the doors saying "closed over summer." Doesn't look like they've done much (if anything) inside right now. The Student Union itself is supposed to get some new furniture as well, though the formal expansion is a No Go according to an SU manager "because Rick Scott vetoed our money." So that's another year off at least, though when it does happen the first consideration will likely be to create a second floor of additional meeting rooms for the Live Oak Pavillion. The Brian Keintz (old SU director) plan to divide up the Grand Palm to create a space for the gamers since they were displaced by the New era salon has been shelved since the space is in high demand right now. I believe it will be divided up eventually since any northward expansion of the existing Union would likely have to take over the grass performance space and creating a hallway through the Grand Palm is the best way to access that space.

Moving on to the rest of campus, the Breezeway floor has been repainted. Same color. Nothing new there, same thing happens every summer to keep it fresh. No new developments along the Breezeway save for a few more tables adjacent to Business East. So nothing to show there. At the north end of the Breezeway, however, one could find this construction fence on the southwest side of the Rec Center...

And here's the project area. I'm told it will be a new fitness classroom space.

Here are two renderings of the new Innovation Village Parking Garage. Not sure if you've seen them already or not. Have to say I'm still very disappointed that the retail component will not be in place when this garage is finished... apparently because it would have delayed construction and they wanted to open it during the Fall semester (could be as late as November)

 
It's a little out of view in this rendering but if you look in the lower left-hand corner you can see the new traffic signal intersection. It looks like the only entrance will be on the west side of the garage. Not sure how this will work out for gameday parking in the future but I'm sure it won't be free...

For those of you who haven't been on campus in a couple years, the Education building got a new paint job a little while back. It used to be mostly white.

And finally, Volusia Street - the street you take from Parking Garage 1 toward the Burrow/baseball stadium - got a couple spirit banners when President Obama came to speak. Always a nice touch.

 Executive summary of developments:

- Parliament Hall: Housing has put up a great photo album on their FB page showing off progress on the new dorm. Might want to bookmark that and reference that going forward. Much better shots than I can get you so I'm going to turn it over to them.
- Student Union Expansion: On hold.
- Breezeway Renovation: Nothing substantial yet, just a repaint. They do have the money for it though.
- Campus Rec Expansion: In progress, adding new fitness room. A plan to add more volleyball, tennis and basketball courts is ON HOLD because of money.
- Baseball Stadium Renovation/New Stadium: Pat Chun told media it was "third priority" behind New Academic Center and Weight Room. To be fair, that does service ALL sports as opposed to just one. The $1M baseball stadium renovation project that was proposed has dropped off the Construction List; it would have been a joint contribution between the university and Athletics.
- New Basketball Arena: Nothing new on this front. See above.
- 20th Street/University Blvd: FAU and the City recently met to express their mutual interest in making this project happen. Only thing that really came out of it was pointing out that they were both on the same page and that they needed to meet again in the near future. I'll keep an eye out for any Boca legislation that would formally change the name.

Guess that's it for now. As always,

GO OWLS!

Projects Underway

Parking Garage 3 is finally under construction but there's very little to show you at this point other than a green fence surrounding dirt being moved around by cranes. Doesn't make for very exciting photographs but the good news is, it's underway. Very much doubt it'll be ready by the home football opener vs MTSU on September 21st but it could be open by the Shula Bowl on 11/29 (official word from FAU is "late Fall 2013").

Unfortunately, I'm hearing that Garage 3 will not have retail when it opens. Guess this is to be expected since there haven't been any announcements about it and nobody seemed to know what was going on there until now. Pretty bummed about that.

Other projects that FAU is working on:

- The $2M Centre Marketplace expansion, expected to open mid-July 2013.

 - $1.8M addition to the Memory & Wellness Center, funded by donation.

- Trauma Simulation Center for the Med School in the R&D park.

- The College of Urban and Regional Planning is consolidating in Boca while the School of Graphic Design and Multimedia is shipping down to the Davie campus.

- Campus Rec is looking into a "Design [for an] outdoor sports facility incl Vollyball, tennis & basketball courts" but that project is classified as ON HOLD.A basketball court and a sand volleyball court are in the design for the courtyard of the new dorm, Parliament Hall.

- Along those lines is a "QUOTE - Add three sand Volleyball Courts west of Oxley." WEST of the Oxley? West of the Oxley is the football practice fields, so they must mean even west of that... but that seems pretty out of the way to put up some sand volleyball courts.

- Renovation for the Student Union lobby, including new furniture. This may be tied to the upcoming expansion of the Union.

- Quote to add a projection screen to the Founders Lounge.

- Repaving 20th Street.


Nothing new on:

- Construction of University Park on 20th Street.

- 20th Street becoming University Boulevard.


In other news:

- The Team Store on the second floor of the stadium opened for the Spring Game, so now there are two team stores in the stadium.

- The Jupiter campus held their first TED conference and it went well. For those who aren't familiar with the event, TED stands for "Technology, Education and Design." The so-called "TED talks" originated in California and have drawn in a ton of fascinating speakers to discuss advances in their respective fields, usually via story. Here's a great example:

FAU's conference may not have drawn in any famous speakers during its first go-around but it's a start and a step in the right direction. Hope it spreads to the Boca campus as well.
 
                                                                             GO OWLS!

New Food Options in the New Dorm

According to the March 20th, 2013 Meeting Minutes on the DineonCampus website, the new dorm should have a Red Mango and a Simply Puur.

Red Mango is a frozen yogurt, smoothie and "frozen coffee chillers" place. On their site you'll find this list which goes into a little more detail about that. Basically we'll finally have a froyo place on campus.

Simply Puur seems like a "healthier, more wholesome" version of the Caf - which is good. Sandwiches, soups, rice bowls, coffee. Below is a promotional video showing off some of their food, though if you just want to skip it you can see their full menus here. You can also read the Yelp reviews of the Orlando location here.

In other Dining News, Chartwells had sponsored a Naming Contest for Coyote Jack's (which is unfortunately over now, sorry about that) via their Facebook page because "The Client (The University) wants to have their own brand and start a new legacy. IT will still be a sports bar like place but with a new flare and menu."

I assume this means it will have a more FAU-specific name (Coyote Jack's never really made any sense) and hopefully, ohpleasegod, a decent menu for once; I could never get anybody to go there for food after the first time, which was pretty telling.

They got >400 submissions and the winner of the Coyote Jacks Renaming Contest will be announced June 1st. 

What would you have called it?
                                                                             GO OWLS!

Photo Update: Centre Marketplace Expansion, All-Night Study Center

If you've been on campus lately, you might have noticed some construction going on over at the Student Union. This is not the formal expansion project we've previously discussed but rather an expansion to the Centre Marketplace buffet area, colloquially known on campus as "the Caf."

(Not "the Cafe," mind you, but "the Caf." No idea why.)
 
So what are they doing? Well, as FAU grows, so too must the dining areas for feeding them. With the new, yet-unnamed Residence Hall opening in Fall 2013, our total residential student population will be topping out around 4,100 people, so Chartwells needed to expand the Caf by 500 seats.

(As an interesting side note, we had only 2,300 people living on campus in 2010, a mere three years ago)

According to FAU documents, the project will double the capacity of the Caf at a cost of $5.6M. That's a figure that may sting a little bit considering how close it is to the $6M that GEO Group was going to give us, but apparently this is a contractual thing requiring Chartwells Food Services to make capital investments in the university infrastructure. So it's not like FAU is using $5.6M that it had stashed away somewhere that could have gone to the stadium. Let's be clear on that.

EDIT: I previously stated that the expansion would cost $2M, which seems like a more reasonable estimate to just add more floor space, so I'm wondering what the additional cost could be - maybe new food kiosks? I'll ask around. At one point there was a rumor going around that Chartwells was considering a dedicated kitchen area that you could order a dinner from and then pick it up; perhaps that's back on the table? I have absolutely no sources to back that up at this time, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

Anyway...

I snapped some pictures for you guys on a recent visit. Here's how the Expansion looks now:

If you remember the giant egg/football/whale statue that used to be coming out of the ground, this completely replaced that - it's going to extend pretty much all the way to the road (West University Drive).

And here's how it will look:

Not too shabby! Especially digging the multicolored planes of glass. The rendering also suggests that the road in front of it will be redone with pavers, but I honestly doubt that's going to happen because, quite frankly, paving just the portion of road outside of the Caf will look silly and repaving a larger portion of West University to match it would be pretty costly.

That said, I do think both Glades entrances should be redone with pavers to give them a more grandiose presentation but seeing as they just repaved the western (main) entrance with regular asphalt, I doubt they're going to be installing pavers any time soon. Maybe it's for the best because what you'd really want to do there is pavers, extensive landscaping around the signs and redo the median to have a water feature like a row of fountains.

In the meantime, we can continue to do other small projects like this recent $50,000 renovation of the All-Night Study Area on the east side of the library. According to the new SG website, the renovation provided for "better seating, charging stations, and study areas." Take a look:

As you can see, one thing SG has been really good about is integrating the school colors into more things. I'm not sure how much of this was red and blue before (pretty sure the stairwell was already blue, or maybe more of a green color before?) but the second floor definitely has more blue and red. Also, I believe this seating area is new:

I used the All-Night Study Area quite a bit in undergrad - in fact, my study group was once kicked out because it "wasn't open yet." Once it opened, it was an awesome place because every university needs to have a 24/7 study spot. The fact is tests occur on all days of the week and there are times when students need to review Powerpoints on campus at 2 am on a Tuesday for their test at 9 am on Wednesday morning, so there needs to be a place for them. That's just college (and grad school, and professional school, but you get my point). So the original construction of this facility was pivotal especially since they had removed the original 24-hour Study Center that became Einstein's Bagels (for those of you who are new to FAU, that's what used to be in that space).

But even that's not enough space, as anecdotal reports are streaming through on Twitter about people having to sit on the floor in the library because there isn't enough space. Student Government responded by requesting that Administration consider building a dedicated Study Building, which on most college campuses is called "a new library." Hey, you never know. FAU does have an interest in building a "Science and Technology Library."

Student Government has been up to a couple other things as well. Three Historic Plaques have gone up on campus dedicated to the football team (seen below), the university's dedication by Lyndon B. Johnson (by the library) and President Barack Obama speaking at the Burrow (outside the Burrow). There may be more but these are the ones that I know about right now.

In other news, there's been no movement (as far as I can tell) on the following projects:

- University Park, the dorm project to be built on 20th Street
- Officially renaming 20th Street to University Boulevard

Until next time.

P.S. Don't let the recent controversies at FAU shake your faith. This is still a great school with great people and a great atmosphere. It's still making tremendous strides forward. Be proud of your heritage.

                                                                            GO OWLS!

The Island

FAU recently hired a consultant to gauge the university's impact on the surrounding community, what it's doing well and how it could be doing better. Mixed responses abounded, of course, but I thought several suggestions in the report really stuck out:

     1) provide student interns through a central source (one participant of a focus group complained, "I 
         don't know who to contact to get students/interns for any of my projects!" - GREAT idea

     2) provide entertainment and more lecture series for the community - FANTASTIC

     3) Brief e-mails to individuals and business owners about what they'd like from FAU, especially
         outside of Boca Raton ("too Boca-centric"). The general idea here is to think of each campus as
         feeding students to the surrounding communities, not just Boca.

     4) Social interactions of the community with faculty. There was a LOT of talk about using faculty in
          various ways to allow people to get to know FAU and benefit from their experience.

     5) Alumni Association should be the "welcoming mat" of the university

     6) Perhaps an orientation for adults so they can get better acquainted with the university instead of
          "knowing it in fragments." ("Everyone in Boca knows about FAU, but they don’t know what it
          does."- Another AWESOME idea

      7) Communication issues are HUGE with FAU ("FAU isn't silos, it's eggs. Lots of talent but you can't
           get to it") which is just ridiculous. For some reason, it's been so hard for businesses, even in the
           Research Park, to get good people that the community basically stops trying.

      8) Launch an identity campaign of "Knowing the Unknown" so people can "get" FAU

      9) "Don't just be a university, be the university." Talk about a sweet slogan!

There was a lot of talk about how FAU is "insular" and doesn't do enough community outreach and when it does, it's usually to ask for money. "There’s a major disconnection with community leadership organizations, because athletics beat them up with fundraising requests." Ouch. I guess when you're "seen but not heard" as a major institution and the only time you come up to meet your neighbors is to pick their wallets, they're going to be hesitant.

It makes sense for us to start thinking about ways to incorporate the public into FAU better so it's not just OUR university as students/faculty/alumni but everyone's university. Give the Boca residents a reason to brag about FAU being in their backyard. Expand the sense of family and belonging to let them know that this isn't just about us taking up half your city with traffic and buildings, this is about creating a focal point for the City where everyone can access knowledge, resources, technology and entertainment. People in Boca Raton (and every city where FAU is located) should be beating their chests over pride for this university. And we have to give them more of a reason to do that, clearly.

"They clearly want FAU to be an integral part of their communities both to strengthen who they are and to give them “crowing rights” with their friends around Gainesville and Tallahassee."

That said...

GROW BUT GROW OUR WAY SINCE WE WERE HERE FIRST

The community wanted a sense of controlled growth - something they've expressed before:

"While it may sound too glib, it is not an exaggeration to say that the majority of the community participants in Boca Raton would like to see FAU be highly competitive with the University of Florida and Florida State University, but they do not want the students to behave like the students at those two universities. There is clearly no desire on the part of this community to turn Boca into anything closely resembling a “college town,” although most are happy to have the stadium and sports teams in their backyards. They want FAU to be a place that provides the advantages that a great university brings to a city: academic, healthcare and research assets that attract a talent pool, new businesses and cultural institutions."
Elsewhere it mentions how the community remembers how the students at UF and FSU "controlled those towns" and they "wanted to remind everyone that Boca was here before FAU."

Ooh, a turf war.

WELCOME TO THE ISLAND

Regarding the students:

"The major focus of the students’ conversation centered on the fact that they enjoy the University academically but that the community of Boca Raton stifles their ability to have fun and engage in social activities off-campus. The students’ understanding of this fear is that Boca residents are afraid of Boca becoming like the communities around the University of Florida in Gainesville and Florida State University in Tallahassee. 

 The result of this is that FAU is set off like an island with very few restaurants, stores and other outlets that students can afford. (They note that they cannot afford the University Plaza, which has mainly high-end stores that serve the Boca community but not FAU students.) The students have proposed a safety van to take them to and from establishments that serve alcohol, but this has so far not been done. The Subway at the stadium is very good for them, but its service area is too small."

We've talked about a number of these complaints before - University Plaza IS too expensive for students and the FAU administration continues to ignore this issue - so I won't retread that territory right now. An on-call safety van is an interesting idea but I'm not too sure how the pricing structure works since I wasn't able to find a comparable service online. Does an entity like Traffic&Parking or Student Government pay a flat annual fee like for the shuttles? Or do the students pay every time they use it, like a taxi, and in that case why not just use a taxi? I assume it's the former and I wonder how many of these would be available and how many people would "abuse" it. Still, I think it's an idea worth exploring.

One of the nice things about the University Boulevard idea (where 20th street gets re-purposed and redeveloped for college-specific development) is the suggestion that it could line up a main street of college bars and students could be within walking distance of campus, something Night Owl/O'Brien's/Wishing Well/Funky Buddah/Irishmen couldn't really claim. Furthermore, there's really not a lot of traffic along that route (currently) so you shouldn't stumble into traffic too often. And having all the bars in that one place means you could conceivably run NightOwls (the campus golf-cart service) down and pick people up from there. We're already providing that service (and they don't get as many calls as you'd think) so it would be easy to add a couple more carts and have them run service to/from University Boulevard. In fact on the weekends I'd imagine that being its main purpose because come on, nobody needs to ride NightOwls from HPT to the Caf (and they currently run that route a lot more than they should)

Yet in order to truly sell the University Boulevard idea to potential developers, the university may have to branch out from The Island and make more appearances at City Council meetings and other places. Could we get people to do it as things are now, sure. But if we want people to build these kinds of places and invest so much money and man hours into it, it would be so much better if they were more than just people looking to make a buck and actual fans of the university as well. To people like that - the kind who build places like The Swamp restaurant in Gainesville - it's not just about selling appetizers, it's about being a part of the university and contributing to the college experience. Imagine if they could do that here.

We don't have to be an island.

GO OWLS!

Droppin' in

Apologize for the hiatus - school has picked up in full swing again and I'm extremely busy. Might be able to do a few quick updates here and there but no promises.

So what's been happening?

The new dorm construction is going pretty smoothly. A naming contest was circulated but I don't believe it has an official name yet. The structure is now 50-75% painted and the windows have been installed. Everything looks to be good for a Fall 2013 opening and even though I've seen nothing concrete yet, I'd expect the price point to be comparable to IVA. You can see a brochure for the new dorm, including the layout of the rooms, in this official FAU housing document. I continue to be disappointed with FAU for choosing number of students over quality of life; hopefully one day soon here RSA (Residential Student Association) stands up to the university and demands that future dorms incorporate both living rooms and kitchens.

A Student Union Planning committee has been meeting to discuss and plan out the upcoming $14.8m expansion of the existing Student Union. The project is slated to start in fiscal year 2013-2014 and has been called a "major expansion." Now, I've heard various rumors about what will happen, some of which I've posted here. The most recent rumor is that the Student Union will stretch out to the north and the existing paved courtyard will become a two-story building (including a second story for the Live Oak meetings rooms A-D). The outdoor lawn encircled by tall bushes that has hosted several concerts and the Freshmen Foam Party would then become the new courtyard. In the meantime, the committee has been mostly working on... picking out furniture for the new space. Don't be surprised if it's red or blue.

Heritage Park (the park, not the dorm) is likely to be officially renamed the John M. Freeman Heritage Park after the math/science emeritus professor of the same name who helped create it back in 1971. Dr. Freeman passed away on Feb. 19th, 2012, but the renaming proposal document goes on to talk about how he worked to bring a number of native Florida trees to the Boca campus.

A new ad-hoc sub-committee is being formed "to address issues relating to the University's athletics program." From the sounds of it, the committee brings more "administrative oversight" to issues like program support, compliance, marketing and sports sponsorship, communications and community involvement. I imagine you small government guys may feel a little uneasy about this. Meanwhile AD Pat Chun is due to report that "the Department of Athletics is in the final stages of its first strategic plan" and this will hopefully mean a revitalized push for new facilities (dare I say a capital campaign??)

"All well and good but what about naming rights?" I know, I know. Well apparently "FAU is also in the process of contracting with Sunrise Sports & Entertainment, the company that runs the BB&T Center. They will help us identify prospects for naming for the FAU Stadium plus help promote and book concerts and events at the FAU Stadium." That's where we're at there. You may have noticed that the BankAtlantic in the Breezeway is now a BB&T Bank.

What else... the City of Boca has not made much mention of anything related to FAU. The University Park project has not broken ground. They have not (to my knowledge) had another meeting to implement the 20th Street/University Boulevard idea, even though the Mayor has identified it as an important project. Mainly the City has been embroiled in a debate with local citizens who are banding together to prevent the developer Archstone from building rental apartments downtown. Furthermore, they;re concerned about not only Archstone but about the University Village proposal that would be north of FAU. It's not a dorm or FAU-centric project per se but that is a suggestive name. Right now that's in the baby stages. I also have not seen any movement on The Grove, a new student housing project that would be near Windwood.

That's all for now. I have another entry coming up soon about a recent consultant report of FAU's impact on the community which will pop up as soon as I get another minute to finish it up. In the meantime, as always,

                                                                               GO OWLS!

Public Bikes and Freshmen Restrictions

When I went to FAU, my dad said I needed two things: a car and a bicycle. He explained, "Everyone in college has a bicycle. That's just how you get around."

And for the most part, he's correct. In a lot of college towns, a bike can get you to most places you need. As universities mature, more and more businesses and services are attracted to the college population, thus concentrating most of the "vital" locations in one spot. Considering the ever-rising cost of tuition at public universities, it's always a blessing when you, as a student, can get around without spending too much money on gas; a bike saves you money for food and beer, the main cash drains of college life.

However, Boca Raton has been slow to adopt a bike-friendly stance, hiding behind the ideas that it's too hot or everybody has a car, so what's the point? It's not that hot, everybody needs a car because we didn't plan the city better with bikes in mind (more bike lanes and concentration of services will change that) and it's good exercise. Freshman fifteen? Not so easy to put on weight if you're biking 4-5 days a week.

Unfortunately, the number of designated bike lanes on main roads in Boca has been scarce (seriously, take a look around next time you're sitting at a stop light) but that has recently begun to change as the City looks for ways to cut down on traffic on "major arterials" like Glades Road. Both 20th Street and Glades have gotten bike lanes, which is an important start, and El Rio Trail has connected with Yamato Road so students can commute back and forth between the Tri-Rail and campus.

It's a good start, really. But we need to start thinking long-term here and consider a growing concept that's proven to be quite efficient and successful: a public bike share program.

Thanks Wikipedia.

As this 2011 Sun-Sentinel article explains, three areas in South Florida - Delray, Broward and Miami - are already signing on. Typically this is how it works:

1) You buy a membership card (day, week, year) if you don't already have one. Some places, like Miami's DecoBike program, will also allow "access passes" for 30 minutes to several hours.

2) Use your card to unlock one of the bikes. Your first 30 minutes are always free. Bike anywhere and return it in under 30 minutes, no charge. After that, they charge you for the time (~$5/30 minutes)

3) Return the bike to any locking station. Each station will have a map showing where else you can go; if it's a good map, it will tell you how long it should take you to bike there at normal speed.

Each place that does it charges a little bit different but that's the basic idea. It's not supposed to break the bank. It's supposed to be like a monthly subway pass, just get you moving to where you need to go every day. Imagine if we could do that in Boca?

Places where "Boca Bike" / "U-Bike" stations could be located:

• FAU Student Union
• FAU stadium/Innovation Village plaza
• Tom Oxley Center
• University Village Apartments (so that way you have it in four key places at FAU in each of the four cardinal directions)
• Yamato Tri-Rail (students could then ride up El Rio Trail and dock the bike at one of the four spots above)
• The proposed new Tri-Rail station at Glades & Military
• Lynn University (entrance)
• University Commons
• Boomers/Cinemark
• Town Centre Mall
• Glades Plaza/Town Centre Shoppes (by Starbucks, Moe's, Five Guys)
• Countess de la Hoernle Park (the new park on Spanish River Blvd, across from the library)
• Spanish River beach at Spanish River Blvd & A1A
• 5th Avenue Shoppes (20th Street & Federal); most of the rental bike places have baskets so you could do light shopping at places like Publix or pick up take-away at Pei Wei.

And so on, including potential spots in (or near) student apartment complexes. Notice that all of these places can be reached in 30 minutes of biking, so that's why I didn't extend it all over Boca to, say, 441 and Glades (because 0.000000001% of people would attempt that trip from FAU anyway)

See, this is particularly important because a bike rental program of some kind needs to be in place if FAU is going to restrict freshmen from having cars on campus, a virtual certainty in the next few years. After all, 3478 students live on the Boca Raton campus. Granted, not all of them have cars, but even if 3k spots opened up, that would be much appreciated by commuter students and staff, and would keep the freshmen on (or near) campus on the weekends - which is one of FAU's goals.

Without a car, freshmen would have to rely on either the (unreliable) Palm Tran system, an FAU-sponsored off-campus shuttle route (which we have yet to provide) or bikes that would give students the most freedom about where they're going and when. They could have their own bikes, and a good number will, but bike maintenance can be costly so that's just a decision people will have to make.

In any case, restricting freshmen residents from having cars may drive down the demand for on-campus housing, it's true, and I haven't seen any FAU studies on how many students would prefer to live off-campus just so they can have their car. That's a good question to ask, but with so many colleges doing it now, it's becoming a fairly common thing and I'm sure someone has figured it out. The reality is that the desire to live on campus is pretty strong among freshmen as part of the whole novelty of going to college and they'll be willing to roll with the punches. Sure, they'll complain in the beginning but with the right system in place - bikes, shuttles, buses - it will eventually become a non-issue as people just write it off as "that's the way things are done in college" (like they'll do with the idea of printing out tickets for FAU athletic events).

In fact, over time I'm sure it will become a strength of the school, a selling point. "They even have a bike rental system and you can get them wherever you need to go, so it's cool."

GO OWLS!